West Des Moines, Ia. — Michele Bachmann met dozens of voters and a horde of media in an afternoon stroll through the Valley Junction shopping district here this afternoon.

The Republican presidential candidate met potential supporters at Paula’s Restaurant amidst a literal crush of reporters and TV cameras, posing for snapshots and imploring voters to turn out for her at tonight’s caucuses, the first contest of the presidential nominating process.

The mass of media followed her to the Floral Touch flower shop and the Diggity Dog pet-supply store, where Bachmann chatted up the owner and her husband, Marcus, bought dog treats and sunglasses for the family beagle, Boomer.

None of the visits were heavy on policy talk or Bachmann’s priorities as president, although Bachmann did talk briefly about the insurance challenges facing the Diggity Dog with store owner Judy Johnson.

“What would help you more than anything as a business owner?” Bachmann asked Johnson.

“That’s what we hear from everybody,” Bachmann said, pivoting to her well-worn talking points opposing the federal health-care law passed in 2010.

As Bachmann headed through the tangle of reporters holding out at all angles cameras, recorders, iPhones and boom mikes to catch a bite or get a shot, she noticed Johnson’s mother, Sally Mead, who presented the candidate with homemade embroidered tea towels.

Bachmann graciously accepted the gift, which Mead said she worked on for two weeks, promising to take them with her to the White House.

The crowd out for Bachmann on Monday skewed much younger than those she typically drew on her trips through Iowa, with many high-school and college-aged people in attendance. But not all of them were local — or supporters. Among them was a group of high-school students from Minneapolis that came down to see the caucuses up close and four young men with video cameras wearing Ron Paul apparel.

New York Times columnist David Brooks dresses like a local during a Michele Bachmann campaign stop in West Des Moines (Jason Noble/The Register).

Also sighted: New York Times columnist David Brooks (wearing an Iowa State hat), conservative journalist Tucker Carlson and NBC’s Andrea Mitchell.

OTHER THEMES: The Minnesota congresswoman also held an outdoor press conference at Valley Junction that drew perhaps the largest crowd of reporters she’s seen since the Iowa Straw Poll last August. Bachmann delivered a variation of the closing-argument stump speech she’s used for much of the last two weeks, playing up her Iowa roots, her humble beginnings and casting herself as an American Margaret Thatcher — a conservative woman capable of reinvigorating a sickly economy.

“What I intend to do is turn the economy around,” she said. “That’s my background. That’s what I understand best.”

When prompted by a reporter’s question, she called out every one of her Republican rivals by name, and offered a rationale for why they couldn’t or shouldn’t be trusted with the party’s nomination. Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich are tainted by records of support for an individual mandate to purchase health insurance, she said. Rick Perry has a history of “crony capitalism.” Ron Paul is wrong on national defense.

To knock Rick Santorum — a fellow social conservative whom Bachmann has criticized very little but who has surged in late-race polling — she referenced his 2004 endorsement of Arlen Specter, a moderate Republican who later switched parties to become a Democrat. She also accused him of supporting earmarks, spending projects secured by lawmakers to benefit their home districts.

THE CANDIDATE’S DAY: In addition to the tour of Valley Junction, Bachmann will make several national-TV appearances today and hold a “Countdown to Caucus” rally at her campaign headquarters in Urbandale.